Page 28 of One More Christmas at the Castle
I tapped at Mrs Powys’s door – the Rose Room – and balancing one end of the tray on my hip with the ease of long practice, turned the porcelain knob and went in.
The brocade curtains, which, like the walls, were a soft and unusual fondant pinkish-lilac colour, had already been pulled back and Sabine Powys was sitting up in bed, propped against a great bank of pillows.
I havenoidea how people sleep on embroidered pillows without waking up next morning with the pattern embossed into their faces, and the French knots must feel likehell.
But Mrs Powys’s face was only imprinted with the marks of time. Without the bright mask of make-up she’d worn the previous night, her skin had a marked pallor and there were pale violet shadows under her eyes.
There was a netting of fine lines, too, so she looked very much her age this morning, but her huge pale blue eyes were diamond bright, emphasized by surprisingly dark eyelashes. She must have them dyed, I thought inconsequentially, while wishing her a cheerful good morning and laying the tray over her knees – it was the sort with handy little fold-down legs.
She surveyed her breakfast without comment, so it must have passed muster, then said, ‘Now that fool of a woman isn’t cooking it, I’d like a lightly boiled egg with my toast tomorrow.’
‘Certainly,’ I agreed.
‘What are you usually called?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Di, perhaps? Dido is such a ridiculous name!’
‘I’m never called Di,’ I said firmly. Only Charlotte had ever called me that.
I didn’t think Sabine was that great a choice, either – I mean, those Sabine women didn’t exactly sound a laugh-a-minute – but I said politely, ‘I know it’s unusual, but my father liked it. You need something fairly distinctive to go with Jones.’
She made no further comment, so I asked if I could get her anything else. ‘I could still boil you an egg now and make fresh toast, if you fancy it?’
‘No, tomorrow will do. I’m just grateful not to have my coffee slopped all over the tray and burnt, scraped toast, which is all that Lucy can usually manage. And half the time, she forgets and makes me instant coffee, without even letting the kettle come to the boil.’
‘I think she must be a little absent-minded,’ I suggested. ‘This is dark Italian ground coffee, made in a cafetière – that’s what Maria said you preferred. She wrote everything down for me in great detail.’
‘I’m sure she’s told Lucy what I like repeatedly, too, though since there’s nothing in Lucy’s head to impede it, it will have gone in one ear and out of the other,’ she said, then I suddenly noticed she was looking at me with an indefinable expression on her face, just as she had the night before, when we had first met.
But it vanished so quickly I thought I must have imagined it and she said, dismissively, ‘Well, I’ll see you and Henry in the library at half past nine and we can discuss your duties and all the arrangements for the house party, then.’
‘Yes, Mrs Powys,’ I agreed and, taking my cue, went out.
There was no sign of the Poor Relation when I got back to the kitchen, but instead, Xan was there, sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, watching Henry grilling bacon.
The small brown-and-white spaniel was also watching Henry,with rapt attention in his slightly bulging eyes, and barely spared me a glance.
Xan was speaking to Henry in the deep, soft and mellow voice that I remembered so well.
‘Ignore Plum, he’s already wolfed down all of his own breakfast, but he’s so greedy.’
The small, stainless-steel dog bowl in the corner was certainly shining as if it had had an extensive tongue-polishing and a pool of water was spreading out from the bowl next to it. I suspected Plum, with his slightly undershot jaw, was a messy eater and drinker.
‘Good morning,’ Xan said, half-turning and automatically giving me the wary half-smile of a man whose every word and expression was likely to be misinterpreted by the opposite sex. He hadn’t quite perfected that in his previous incarnation as a dreamy youth, though I did remember the occasional startled look of a stag at bay, when Charlotte and I had cornered him.
‘Good morning,’ I replied coolly, not answering the smile.
‘We’re having bacon rolls and there’s enough for you, too, Dido,’ Henry said, flipping the rashers over with a pair of tongs. ‘Xan’s joining us. He doesn’t fancy a tête-à-tête in the morning room with Cousin Lucy, but luckily she’d just taken her pot of tea through before he got here.’
‘I hope you don’t mind my invading your kitchen like this,’ Xan remarked, stepping up the wattage of the smile a little. ‘Henry said you wouldn’t.’
‘Not at all,’ I said politely, meaning, of course, the opposite, and the smile faded.
‘I’d better check Lucy’s got everything she wants, before I have mine,’ I added.
‘Except Xan – he came down the servants’ stairs to try and avoid running into her,’ said Henry, grinning.
‘I had the run of the place when I stayed here as a boy, so I know my way around,’ explained Xan. ‘Asa and Sabine were my godparents – and my father’s before me – because my grandfather, Tommy Fellowes, was Asa’s best friend, as well as the photographer on all the early underwater documentaries.’
‘We’ve seen some clips from those on YouTube,’ I said, interested despite myself.
